How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) by Kathy Lette (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📗

‘That just means he doesn’t fancy you any more,’ Jazz pronounced.

‘How dare you!’ Hannah said with rigid grace.

‘If all you’re doing is a lot of connubial cuddling, well, it’s over, sweetie. Truth is, sex is like air,’ Jazz pronounced. ‘No big deal unless you’re not getting any. Especially when he obviously is,’ she concluded poignantly.

The interval bells were sounding the five-minute warning, but the loo queue seemed to be enjoying our private mini-drama much more than the critically acclaimed Ibsen.

‘You could agree to an arrangement. You know, the way the French do,’ Hannah suggested. ‘Couldn’t she, Cassie?’

One of life’s great truisms, like the fact that nudists are always the very people you don’t ever want to see naked, is that you should never interfere in a girlfriend’s marriage. ‘Um . . .’

‘An arrangement? Yes, that’s a splendid idea,’ Jazz jumped in. ‘David can arrange to fuck around and I can arrange to kill him.’

The loo queue cheered their support. It seems that wives are recycling husbands so fast there should be a recycling bin at the bottle bank just for them. Green glass, brown glass, clear glass, and then the Boring Cheating Husband bin.

Back in the foyer, we were swept up in the exultant crowd exploding from the bar like champagne, yet I took my seat feeling flat. Even the play, Hedda Gabler, was really just a kind of Norwegian Desperate Housewives. Our angst was nothing new. I definitely had the feeling Hedda had lost her orgasm too – and look where that had got her! Judging by the mounting evidence, marriage was turning out to be as exciting as thrush, only much harder to be rid of. Like a drummer with an IQ, a quiet American or a fat model, it seemed that a happy marriage was an oddity of nature. But Rory and I were still happy, despite a few disagreements and a little disenchantment of late . . . weren’t we?

We talked when shopping.

‘The good thing about being a woman is, no matter how bad things get, we can always go shopping,’ Jazz declared as we rode the Selfridges escalator.

‘Armani who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name,’ Hannah genuflected.

‘I read this article that said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too much, impulse buying and driving too fast. Are they kidding? That’s my idea of a divine day,’ I added excitedly. I had one whole hour of indulgence before the kids were due to be collected from tennis.

While we lost ourselves in rack-pawing, sales delirium and guiltless gimme, Hannah tried to convince Jazz that she needed to dress more seductively to win back her husband’s devotions. I was also in the stylistic firing line.

‘You’ll never get a promotion in shoes like that. Where did you get those anyway?’ Hannah said, pointing at my suede loafers.

‘Somewhere at the back of my closet.’

‘Dah-ling, your shoes are so far back in the closet they’re gay. Now . . .’ She checked to see if Jazz was out of earshot. ‘We need to talk. Jazz can’t divorce. There’s so little difference between husbands, she might as well keep the shmuck whose disgusting eating and farting habits she’s got used to.’

In truth I would rather listen to a Yoko Ono CD than hear Hannah lecturing me on reasons Jazz should stay in her marriage. But as I tried to move away, she seized my arm.

‘You really want to condemn your friend to a life on her own, nibbling microwaved Lean Cuisine meals and watching repeats of Sex and the City?’

‘I don’t think Jazz is interested in finding another husband, Hannah, although an aged billionaire with a great art collection who is quite ill could hold some appeal, I guess.’

But Hannah refused to be amused. ‘Divorce is a bad, bad idea, Cassie. And you’ll back me up, yes?’

Besides manually masturbating caged animals for artificial insemination, I couldn’t think of a worse request. I was going to procrastinate but, as usual, I didn’t quite get round to it.

‘Um, yeah, sure.’

We talked, naked, in the changing room of the gym after water aerobics.

‘If swimming’s so good for losing weight, how do you explain walruses?’ I panted, balancing on one leg like an asthmatic flamingo as I threaded a damp foot into a knicker leg hole. Jazz remained stony-faced. ‘Cheer up, love. Leonardo Di Caprio’s still s ingle. Now that’s something to smile about.’

‘No. The reason to smile is that every seven minutes of every day, a husband, somewhere in the world, dies.’ Jazz glanced around to make sure Hannah was not eavesdropping, but our suave friend was still in the showers rubbing on her latest anti-aging cream – some mix of minced Transylvanian fluke fish and puréed sloth.

‘We need to talk. You’ve got to back me up against Hannah,’ she said urgently. ‘Without the lubrication of love, the cogs of a marriage grind away into dust. Don’t you think?’

What I thought was that she’d been listening to too much Leonard Cohen. ‘Um . . .’

Her fingers dug into my shoulder. ‘There’s nothing lonelier than an unhappy marriage,’ Jazz went on. ‘Gloria Steinem once said that the surest way to be alone was to get married. I’m like a married single mother, and so are you, Cass. But Hannah’s so judgemental. You will back me up, right?’

Gnawing an Albanian weight-lifter’s jockstrap would be a preferable option. ‘Yeah, sure.’

My best friend jumped for joy.

So did I – right off the nearest bridge.

The day Jazz’s results were due the hospital called to say they needed to do more tests. This did not bode well. Hannah and I immediately dropped everything. After a frantic ring around to arrange play dates and vowing yet again to get an au pair (most middle-class English kids have no idea that their au pair is not their mother until they’re about ten, which can be quite a trauma as they can only speak Croatian), I went straight to Jazz’s house after school.

I was not prepared for Studz to open the door.

It was one of those rare